Online Forms and Logic

As I was making an online payment for my auto insurance, I noticed an all-to-frequent issue with online forms: button placement.

Logic would tell you that to go forward or to the next step, you would click on the button to the right, and to go back you would click the button on the left. Apparently the person setting up this form decided to take logic out of the equation. It makes me wonder how many people have clicked on the “previous” button by accident when intending to click “next”.

I have actually seen this many times over when it comes to online forms. The worst scenario is a long form with 2 buttons on the bottom: submit and clear. First of all, I don’t see the need for a “clear” button on many forms. Who fills out a form and then decides they need to completely start over? But for some reason, they still show up at the bottom of many online forms. So in these cases, the logic of where to put the submit button is even more critical. If you place the “clear” button to the right of “submit”, you will have the occasional user clicking on it by accident.

If you have an online form (survey, order form, etc) that seems to be light on submissions, you may want to double check your form logic as well. You may have numerous people filling out your form once … but after clearing it accidentally, decide not to fill it out a second time.